Five loads came out of one house in RH8 in July 2019, and even then it ran into a second day. A fridge freezer went off on its own at the end of it — cooling appliances can't ride in with the wardrobes, they go by a separate route and are degassed under controlled conditions. The paperwork for that house clearance never went near a relative. It went to an office in the town, addressed care of the person handling the estate, which is how a good half of our Oxted work arrives. Someone here is dealing with the probate, the family are two or three counties away, and the house has been shut up since before Christmas.
What came out was ordinary and endless, which is the shape most of these take. A smoker's cabinet nobody had opened since the eighties. The counter unit from a serving hatch between the kitchen and the dining room, torn out at some point and left standing on end in the garage. A fold-down ironing centre built into a cupboard, screwed through into brick — that came out with a screwdriver and a bit of swearing rather than force. A bathroom cabinet with the strip light still wired in. Cut-glass decanters on a tray, which we wrapped and put to one side rather than tipped.
Reuse first, tipping last
The decanters, the better furniture and a couple of boxes of kitchenware went off to be resold rather than binned. Around here we run those to charity shops in the area that will take furniture, and the rest of the reusable stuff goes to reuse schemes. Selling something twice beats burying it once. Everything genuinely finished with is weighed in at a permitted transfer station, and the transfer notes come to you if you want to see them. Our waste carrier registration with the Environment Agency is CBDU419679, and it's worth checking that number — or anyone else's — before a van takes your mother's house away, because fly-tipped furniture traces back to the householder, not the man who took it.
Sofas, armchairs and anything padded are their own headache now. Fridges are their own case, degassed under controlled conditions before anything else happens to them. And since the rules on persistent organic pollutants came in, upholstered seating has to be kept apart from the general load and destroyed at a facility set up for it. A three-piece suite and a wardrobe of the same size go to two entirely different places. Mattresses have their own route again. We tell you what has to be handled that way before the day rather than after, so nothing on the van is a surprise to anybody.
A five-load house clearance in Oxted, over two days
Two days is not a failure of planning. It is what a full house in RH8 takes when nobody in it has thrown anything out since the seventies. We book it that way from the start rather than pretending it is a one-day job and leaving the back half of the loft for another week. That Oxted clearance ran to five loads in the end, spread across the two days, with the fridge freezer travelling separately as it has to.
The order of a day like that is dull, and worth knowing anyway. We start at nine. One room at a time, usually from the top of the house down, so the stairs are only carrying things one way and nobody is treading past a landing full of boxes. Anything that looks like paperwork. Bank statements, share certificates, old deeds, photographs, anything with a signature on it. Gets put in a box to one side rather than into the van, because on probate work that box is often the only place a missing policy is going to turn up. Small valuables get the same treatment. If we're not sure, it stays out.
Nobody has to pack anything up beforehand. Take out what you are keeping, tell us or mark it, and leave the rest where it stands; we empty the cupboards, the wardrobes and the drawers ourselves and sweep through at the end. And both owners being there to point at things is our preference, but it is not a requirement. If you would rather not be, we can collect a key from a neighbour or an agent and send you photographs of every room once it is empty, which is what most executors at a distance end up asking for.
The area our house clearance covers, and the postcodes
Oxted sits in Tandridge, in Surrey, in the gap where the railway ducks under the North Downs through the tunnel and comes out the other side at Woldingham. We work the whole of that ridge and the weald below it. RH8 for Oxted, Limpsfield and Hurst Green, RH9 for Godstone, RH7 down through Lingfield and Dormansland, RH1 across to Redhill, RH19 for East Grinstead and the villages round it, CR3 up in Caterham, CR6 for Warlingham and Hamsey Green, CR3 for Whyteleafe and Caterham, CR5 over towards Coulsdon. TN16 and TN8 the other way for Westerham and Edenbridge. Tandridge District Council collects your bins; Surrey County Council runs the community recycling centres, and their tips won't take trade waste or a van full of house contents, which is the reason clearance firms exist.
North of the tunnel the same crews carry on up the A22 and the railway line, and those towns have pages of their own. house clearance in Caterham at the top of the valley, house clearance in Purley where the Surrey lanes give out and the London streets start, and house clearance in South Croydon for the smaller terraces and flats above the Brighton Road.
Most of our teams come down the A22 or off the M25 at Godstone, so an Oxted booking is a straight run rather than a special expedition. If you're meeting us off a train, Oxted station is five minutes from most of the town on foot, and the Uckfield and East Grinstead branches split just south of it. Handy if you're an executor coming down from London for the day and going back the same evening.
Small jobs and flat clearance count too
Not everything is a house. A single wardrobe on a landing, a sofa that won't go back down the stairs it went up, a bed frame, a garage full of the last owner's tins. A single-item collection gets quoted the same way a full house clearance in Oxted does, and gets a proper booked slot rather than being squeezed in when a van happens to be passing. Ask anyway. The answer is almost always yes, and if it genuinely isn't something we can take we will tell you on the phone rather than on the doorstep.
Times do move sometimes. A van gets held up on the M25 or a job the day before overruns, and if your slot has to shift we ring you as early as we know rather than letting you sit by the window. On the day itself you get a call when the van is rolling with a firmer time.
What a day costs
We don't publish figures for house clearance in Oxted, and you should be wary of anyone who does without seeing the house. The same three-bedroom address can be an easy day or a very long one depending on what is in the loft. So the answer to "what will it cost" is always the same: ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs, a video walked through each room, or fill in the form on this page, and you will get a figure back before anybody turns up. No estimator standing in your hallway making a face at the wallpaper.
On probate house clearance in Oxted we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate's own administrators directly. You do not have to pay for the house out of your own pocket and claim it back, and payment can come from the estate. There is no deposit. That is a perfectly normal way for an estate job to be handled, and around here it is the usual one.
The full house clearance jobs, the gardens and the garages
Plenty of the houses we clear round here have been lived in for fifty years by people who mended things rather than replaced them, and it shows the moment the up-and-over door goes up. A wallpaper pasting table behind the door. Seed trays stacked a foot high, grow bags gone to nothing, terracotta pots with most of them split by frost. A chest freezer still running with nothing in it. None of that fazes anyone — and if the house has got well beyond what the family can face walking into, we have done a great many of those and nobody on the crew will comment.
Garage and loft clearance in Oxted
Garage and loft clearance in Oxted is often the whole job rather than part of one. The house has been dealt with by the family, and what is left is the bit nobody could face. A loft hatch on the landing with no ladder, forty years of Christmas decorations, suitcases, a cot, boxes of magazines that have gone soft with damp. We bring our own ladder and lighting, and we take it down ourselves. Same in the garage, where the awkwardness is usually the floor — a shed roof's worth of old timber, a mower with no petrol in it, half a rockery in bags.
There are limits. Paint tins, gas cylinders, solvents, asbestos sheeting off an old garage roof — those need specialist disposal and can't go on an ordinary van, so tell us on the phone if you know they're there and we'll sort the right route. Better that than the team finding six half-full drums of creosote at nine in the morning.
Questions we get asked in Oxted
Can you invoice the solicitor handling the probate? Yes. On a probate clearance we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, the bill can be settled from the estate, and there is no deposit to find first.
Do we need to be there on the day? No. Plenty of our Oxted work is done with a key from an agent or a neighbour, and photographs of every room sent to you once the house is empty.
How soon can you come? Usually within a day or two of when you want us, and we can hold a date for a completion or a probate deadline if you tell us early.
What happens to what you take? Anything usable goes to reuse and to charity shops that will take furniture; the rest is weighed in at a permitted transfer station under our carrier licence, CBDU419679, and you can have the transfer notes.
Do you clear hoarded houses? Yes, and we do not comment. Tell us on the phone what to expect so the right team and the right kit turn up.
Booking one
Ring or email with the postcode, roughly how many bedrooms, and whether the loft, garage, shed and garden are in scope. If you can add a couple of photographs of each room, better still. We'll come back with a figure and a date, usually within a day or two of when you want it, and we start at nine and aim to have the property emptied by the time we leave. Cleaning afterwards can go on the same booking if the house is going straight on the market. We have been doing this since 2007, and whether it's a full four-bedroom in Hurst Green or one sofa in Limpsfield, the answer to "will you take it?" is almost always the same.
